A Qatari sociologist gives Islamic instructions (and a demonstration) on how to beat your wife

To all those who seem to think that being Muslim is in itself a badge of honor, to those who ignore the misogyny inherent in the religion and its dictates, to those feminists who turn a blind eye to the oppression of women in the Middle East, calling Israel an apartheid state but ignoring the “apartheid” against women in Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran—to all these people, have a look at this video from Qatar, featuring a sociologist demonstrating the Islamically permissible way to beat your wife.

MEMRI describes a new video featuring Qatari sociologist Abd Al-Aziz Al-Khazraj Al-Ansari, who uploaded his “demonstration” on the Al-Mojtama YouTube channel. The video is below, and I’ve put some screenshots below it, which I posted before I found the subtitled video on YouTube (MEMRI doesn’t often put its videos there).

Remember that Qatar is considered one of the more liberal Islamic countries, though it’s actually quite despotic in its employment of sharia law, its use of corporal punishment, its deeming of homosexual acts as capital crimes, and its abysmal treatment of guest workers.

I suppose it’s a mercy that Al-Ansari (demonstrating on a boy) shows that Islam mandates just a mild slapping around of the disobedient wife rather than full-on beating and punching, but saying that it’s okay to lay hands on a wife, and even arguing that the women want that because they love domineering men, is flat-out misogynistic. And, of course, there’s the unquestioned assumption that the man is the boss and the woman must do his bidding (see data below). Apartheid, indeed!

Had enough? At least have a listen to this short video of the enlightened sociologist discussing International Women’s Day. As the YouTube notes say,

On March 8, 2019, Qatari sociologist Abd Al-Aziz Al-Khazraj Al-Ansari uploaded a video to the Al-Mojtama YouTube channel, which he runs, in which he mocked International Women’s Day for being a celebration of women’s freedom to “act like whores, to play around… and to do whatever they want.” He mocked Western criticism of the hijab and of the Muslim male chaperone system, alleging that the West tells women to act like sluts instead. He also mocked the West for turning women into “cheap merchandise” and encouraging them to dance, use Snapchat, work as TV hosts and actresses, and attend co-ed universities, where male students fondle them behind the professors’ backs during class. He mockingly said: “Bear him a bastard child!… Yes, freedom!” He also said that the West allows women to serve in the military and police in order to “provide comfort” to male service members, and added that dogs are more honorable than the “filthy” secular people who fool women into driving cars, working as electricians, completing their education, and turning into prostitutes like in Europe, where he claimed 90 percent of children are bastards. Al-Ansari’s Facebook page says that he is the manager of the Center for the Organization of Marriage Projects. The Al-Mojtama YouTube channel’s “About” section says that the channel calls for a return to the instructions of Allah and the Prophet Muhammad.

I doubt there are many women who, thinking from behind John Rawls’s “position of ignorance”, would be happier if they were born in Qatar than in almost any Western country.

If it was DNA, we Europeans would have similar awful mores. Fortunately we don’t. When I was a student in the Netherlands, I had several friends who were Palestinians, Lebanese, Tunesians, and they were charming (very popular with Dutch girls!), intelligent, multilingual, and fun. And they drank beer. Today they stand around corners,in the streets, depressed, dating is taboo, in a world that doesn’t like them.

You sound like one of those woke people who believe in people are born a blank state and that nothing matters but nurture. Not true. Nature/DNA also has a role to play. The nature nature debate us about how much each contributes. Not whether one contributes everything and the other nothing

Differences in DNA could, at least in theory, determine differences in intelligence, aggressiveness and other traits, but DNA cannot transmit views. Just look at the same nations over time – e.g. Arabs were quite enlightened during a period when European Christians burned heretics and witches.

After watching that first video all I could think was that he used the same excuses (eg. we beat our wife out of “love” or “it’s a gentle beating) that an abuser would use to justify their abusive, violent behavior towards women. Disgusting. Throughly disgusting.

Let me immediately state that I have NO doubts in the DNA of any group of Muslims. Actually, judging on previous cultural catastrophies, I suppose that they will eventually build a civilization better than our current one. But, again extrapolating from the past, it will take centuries.

Wife beating in the U.S. is pretty standard stuff and always has been. Religion is not the excuse or justification generally and we don’t put out how to videos but the cities and towns are full of places for women to go hide or look for shelter and assistance from this seemingly natural habit in the male population. Whether it is done legally or illegally, it is equally disgusting. The male population is a cowardly bunch.

Yes, that’s a good one. Post an article – domestic violence against men. That is exactly what PCC was posting on. Give me a break.

If you want to defend all the poor guys beaten up by women be my guest. Let’s start building shelters tomorrow. There are certainly some here who jump at the chance to defend males on this site. I wonder what that is about? Whether it is sexual harassment or wife beaters, seems to make no difference. Maybe unequal pay for men?

Since that Huffy Poo piece is wrong about the sex ratio percentages of DV, and doesn’t even bother to provide its source, and botches the data already distorted in the tendentious article it does cite, I’m far from overwhelmed.

That may well be, BJ, and I’d be interested to see any stats that back it up.

But I gotta tell ya: I’ve sat in the courtroom docks with the rest of the lawyers on many a Monday morn waiting for our cases to get called up for first appearances or arraignments, and the vast majority of domestic violence cases called involved men beatin’ on their wives or girlfriends (and I’ve practiced in places where lesbianism has long been famously common and open).

That’s anecdotal, I know, and it may reflect, at least in part, a selection bias on the part of police as to who gets arrested and on the part of district attorneys as to who gets prosecuted. But as Vince Vega might say, “I seen it with my own eyes, man.”

In addition to the studies linked by others, this entire Wikipedia article has reams of studies showing reciprocity, the apparent gender parity when it comes to experiencing domestic violence, the highest rate of DV being among lesbian relationships, and the studies are from many different countries. The only difference, really, is that men are more likely to injure, but women are somewhat more likely to actually commit DV. There’s a lot more useful information in the article.

I appear to remember a study that showed that violence between intimate partners is as often initiated by females as by males. The thing is that women often come off second best in these fights, for obvious biological reasons.
There are also studies that show that males are close to 10 times as likely as females to kill their (hetero) partner. The motive for a male is generally sexual jealousy, for females that is only the motive in a minority of cases.

Gotta admit, I’ve had a couple women take a poke at me. They did it because they knew they could — because I’ve got a jaw like George Chuvalo (so can take a punch), and because they know I’d never retaliate by laying hands on them (’cause my Daddy raised me that way).

And, while I’d never excuse violence, and won’t say I was to blame, I understand why I kinda had it coming: for the same reason I’ve had a couple guys take a swing at me — by pushing the weisenheimer routine one smart-ass remark too far.

Domestic violence is a pretty wide term and I think sometimes statistics can be misleading without greater context because of that.

Here are some quotes from the Wikipedia article on Domestic Violence In The United States to give more context.

“[T]he majority of women’s physical violence against men is in response to being abused by those men.” (references a couple of review studies)

“The National Institute of Justice contends that national surveys supported by NIJ, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics that examine more serious assaults do not support the conclusion of similar rates of male and female spousal assaults. These surveys are conducted within a safety or crime context and find more partner abuse by men against women.”

“Male violence does more damage than female violence;[38] women are more likely to be injured and/or hospitalized. Women are more likely to be killed by an intimate than the reverse (according to the Department of Justice, the rate is 63.7% to 36.3%),[39] and women in general are more likely to be killed by their spouses than by all other types of assailants combined.”

“The United States was one of the countries identified by a United Nations study with a high rate of domestic violence resulting in death during pregnancy.” (From the UN report this statement references, “A few studies based in health facilities indicate a relationship between intimate partner violence and death during pregnancy. For example, a study of 400 villages and seven hospitals in rural western India found that 16 per cent of all deaths during pregnancy were the result of partner violence.172 A similar trend has been found in Bangladesh and the United States.”)

“Of those killed by an intimate partner, about three quarters are female and about a quarter are male.” (An average of multiple sources is closer to 70 – 30)

BJ isn’t wrong. For example, “A 2013 report by the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 26% of male homosexuals and 44% of lesbians surveyed reported experiencing intimate partner violence.” But more data about different aspects of domestic violence might leave a different impression than what BJ is meaning to imply. Studies indicate that there are very significant statistical differences between men and women including among others, the nature of the violence, namely the intensity or degree, the cause or trigger and the outcome of the violence.

BJ, I think you always overstate your case against a perceived bias in favor of women. In general you seem to be saying much more than merely pointing out that men are also victims of domestic violence, sexism, etc.

Almost 24% of all relationships had some violence, and half (49.7%) of those were reciprocally violent. In nonreciprocally violent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more than 70% of the cases. Reciprocity was associated with more frequent violence among women.… Regarding injury, men were more likely to inflict injury than were women … and reciprocal intimate partner violence was associated with greater injury than was nonreciprocal intimate partner violence regardless of the gender of the perpetrator….

US “cities and towns are full of places for women to go hide..”?? Wow, What a dystopian vision. Sounds like you are trying to say there is a women’s shelter on every block in the US.
What you overlook is that beating women is acceptable according to Islam, meaning that Allah the creator of the universe condones it and even commands it. This becomes the law in whole nations where Muslims are the majority. Brunei is just one example.
Quran 4:34

Meanwhile, in “moderate” Indonesia, a 44 year old Buddhist mother of four has lost her appeal of an 18 month sentence for blasphemy. She had the temerity to request that a neighborhood mosque turn down the volume of its call to prayers because it was hurting her ears. Riots and a blasphemy charge ensued. Such is life in the Muslim world.

This shit makes me as sick as watching the Palestinian propaganda. I couldn’t watch more than a minute. The joy on the face of the “teacher” was so disturbing, like any other teacher feeling happiness at passing on knowledge to the next generation. It’s truly frightening.

Wife-beating in the West is common enough, but typically occurs under the influence of alcohol. In the Islamic world, as Mr. Al-Ansari shows, it occurs instead under the influence of scholars and religion.

The underlying mindset is formed, not by any (epigenetic?) modification of DNA, but by the method attributed to St. Ignatius of Loyola: “Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man.” The truly interesting questions are how and why St. Ignatius’ brain-washing strategy has declined so markedly in the West, while being maintained with unchanged rigor in Islamdom for a thousand years. [This sociological question will not be discussed in our current academic world, of course, because it might verge on dread Islamophobia.]

The whole principle of obeying is rotten and this video emphasises that more than anything else, since this “beating” as demonstrated here is more a form of intimidation (which is also wrong, of course).

This video seems to have the direction from harsh domestic violence towards intimidation, toning it down; and not from non-violent forms of Islam to extremer ones.

The deeper conundrum, for which I don’t know a good answer is whether it’s better that violent Muslims accept this teaching and are less violent, or whether it’s bad, because it still propagates obeying and intimidation, which is still unacceptable, but less worse. It’s always easy to demand the maximum (or nothing), when you have no skin in the game, and demanding the maximum has better optics. I really don’t know how the trade-off pans out, and cannot tell.

It’s clear though that Islam is a deeply authoritarian, patriarchal religion, where “moderate” is about the same as arch-conservative Evangelicals; not moderate at all by European standards.

EEEEEYOWWW!!! This is a real video???? Not a joke? Not a poe? Oh my gosh!!! This is horrible!!

The boy looks like it’s kind of fun to make the video. He clearly does not feel himself in danger.

A big myth that I learned from childhood on is that it’s not abuse if there’s no blood, no bruises, no broken bones. It made it hard for girls and young women (and older women, too) to define what was happening to us.

So there’s that man gently slapping his wife on her arms. No injury, no hard hitting her. Thank you, Muhammad. Yeah. Sure.

But I’m looking at that sh*t and finding it terrifying!!! This makes me sick!!!

That man is clearly intimidating and dominating his wife. The boy knows, of course, that he’s safe, it’s not about him, he’s only play acting. How easy it is to pretend that it won’t terrorize the living sh*t out of a real woman who via marriage is legally handcuffed to this man!! (Shucks, you don’t have to be married to be enmeshed with someone.)

Sh*t, P*ss, and Industrial Waste!!!! Horror show!!!

How easy it is to deny and pretend that there’s no abuse here!! How easy to gaslight the woman, “I don’t beat you! You have no broken bones, no bruises! I don’t see any blood!” How easy to deny that anything happened. “I didn’t hit my wife, Officer. She’s just hysterical. Help me calm her down! You can see for yourself, she has no injuries…”

How easy it is to pretend that Islam is merciful! What a nice man to help his wife learn to behave correctly via kindly discipline – and after all, women do like stro-o-o-ong men…

This video sure has struck a nerve! But I’m glad you posted it, Jerry. I don’t want to hide from crappy icky things and pretend these things don’t happen.

So YouTube allows a demonstration on how to beat a wife… I look forward to the video on how to mount a wife, hopefully not using a young boy, perhaps a blow up doll, a slut from the west?… what an arse of a human this burke is.

Why is this guy called a sociologist? Isn’t he just some nutter posting to Youtube? The only thing I could find about him was in La Razon, a conservative Spanish newspaper, which referred to him as an “ideologue” and “self qualified” (“autocalificado”) “sociologist” (in scare quotes); i.e not actually a sociologist, Qatari or otherwise.

When the Koran was written, that was probably extremely enlightened. (In the same way, I’ve read, that the Biblical “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” was actually a command for restraint and an injunction not to slaughter the entire family of the offender).

The difference is that the vast majority of nominal Xtians these days don’t take much notice of the Bibble, whereas a higher percentage of Muslims take notice of the Koran. Unfortunately.

As it happens, the most recent book submitted by way of complaint to our (NZ) Chief Censor (he obviously doesn’t get many) was ‘To Train up a Child’ by Michael and Debi Pearl, which was implicated in the deaths of several children in the US. (The Censor didn’t ban it, but the bookseller withdrew it from sale).
(I found this when Googling after our censor banned the Christchurch terrorist’s ‘manifesto’).

For the record, I just tried telling my wife (who is a devout Christian of her own denomination) that the Bible said she should love, honour and obey me and she thought I was taking the mickey.